Friday, January 07, 2005

So before somebody rightfully accuses me of slacking, let me state that I did write a first (horrible) rough draft of my first assignment and that, well, I am still on page 8 of my anthropology 95-buck book.

Which reminds me that I never got around to talking about the cost of my books.
Well, at the begining, on my online booklist were only 3 books. Two of them cost almost 100$, so I cancelled my italian class and took another one so I wouldn't have to buy one of those two. That left one book worth 100$ and another one worth about 30$. Which was fine.
However, that was not all, because my teachers thought it would be a good thing to ask for books that are not available at the university bookstore, therefore that wouldn't appear on the online booklist. So I have one more 30$ textbook to buy, then another costing exactly 22.68% and a dictionary worth 85$. It would actually have worked fine with me until the dictionary part, but teachers don't really care about their students' financial situation. We don't need that dictionary until after the mid-term break, so I'm not going to buy it right now, thank you very much.

I'm on page 8 right now. Which is pretty good, because not only did I understand the first 7 pages, I even actually stopped and took time to highlight parts that seemed important to me. This is just like my high school economy, history and geography classes. Oh the joy...

First translation of the term is way too complicated for my little brain (how do you figure you can give out to your students a first assignment worth 10% to hand in on the second week of class when you really haven't taught them anything in the first class?). I was supposed to begin this yesterday afternoon, but instead I fell asleep in front of the TV. I also slept until 10 o'clock this morning (one day I will catch up with all the sleep I've been lacking) and without motivation, my brain feels like it's still sleeping. So if anyone sees my motivation around, please notify me.

I also have about 60 pages to read for my Monday anthropology class. Or make that 59, I read one page yesterday before falling asleep. I also have another translation I should begin, but it is only due in two weeks so it doesn't have to be a priority right now. I would rather be doing that other assignment though, because it seemed much easier.

Thursday, January 06, 2005

In Arkansas, a man can legally beat his wife, but not more than once a month.
In Los Angeles, a man is legally entitled to beat his wife with a leather belt or strap, but the belt can't be wider than 2 inches, unless he has his wife's consent to beat her with a wider strap.
It is illegal to set a mousetrap without a hunting license.
In Cupertino, California, it is illegal to count backwards audibly in hexadecimal.
In Denver, it is unlawful to lend your vacuum cleaner to your next door neighbor.
In Florida, if an elephant is left tied to a parking meter, the parking fee has to be paid just as it would for a vehicle.
Idaho state law makes it illegal for a man to give his sweetheart a box of candy weighing less than fifty pounds.
It's safe to make love while parked in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Police officers aren't allowed to walk up and knock on the window. Any suspicious officer who thinks that sex is taking place must drive up from behind, honk his horn three times and wait approximately two minutes before getting out of his car to investigate.
It is illegal for pigeons to fly over Bellevue, KY.
In Louisiana, It is illegal to rob a bank and then shoot at the bank teller with a water pistol.
No man is allowed to make love to his wife with the smell of garlic, onions, or sardines on his breath in Alexandria, Minnesota. If his wife so requests, law mandates that he must brush his teeth.
In Tulsa, Oklahoma, it is against the law to open a soda bottle without the supervision of a licensed engineer.
In Tennessee, it is illegal to use a lasso to catch a fish.
In Texas, a recently passed anti-crime law requires criminals to give their victims 24 hours notice, either orally or in writing, and to explain the nature of the crime to be committed...

Dear God. Lucky I do re-read myself sometimes : Tweety, the word you are looking for is not "blurb" either, it's actually "blur" and I'm not even sure if that is how it's spelled anyway so I should've just shut up and left it the way it was.

You know you need to sleep when you make mistakes trying to correct someone.

I am exhausted right now. Never occurred to me that, when your Wednesday class ends at 10:45 pm and your first Thursday class begins at 10:15 am, you just might end up lacking sleep. Well, I am for sure, and I really wanna go back to my bed now.

Oh well. I can't type clearly for now, but I have to remember to talk about :
1. last night's class and what (yet another) freak the teacher is.
2. the sudden number of expensive books I have to buy which pisses me off.

Other than that, I just read something quite interesting on Tweety's blog, about how we are constantly trying to be greater than everybody else so that we can distinguish ourselves. I'd reply to that (must admit I pretty much agree with it, and not only on the educational level she is referring to) but my head feels way too light to take a chance and try to write something that would make sense right now. I will just say that I agree, and that the word you are looking for is "blurb" and not "blurp".

Today I have two classes, a 15-minutes break in between which gives me just enough time to get from one to the other. Of course that would mean no time to go and buy something to eat and warm some food up. I do plan to make a stop at the Tim Horton's some mornings to get food for lunch, but as, unexpectedly, I have to pay my tuition fees, far many more books than was indicated on my list, my yearly internet access AND my own personal expenses, those last expenses are reduced to the minimum, and that would include eating. I grabbed tidbits of stuff and dropped it in a bag, and I'm just going to be constantly snacking all through the afternoon.

So I called Co-op Coordinator yesterday to tell her I didn't want the job at the Translation Bureau anymore - actually, that I wanted to take it next summer instead. She proposed another job, stressing that she can only send three students to the Translation Bureau next term, but my mind was made up so I am now officially a student for this term. Yay.

I had so insisted to everyone that I wasn't going to Ottawa that nobody is really surprised. When I hung up with Coordinator, I went to Peanut and told him that I was officially staying, all I got was a not-so-convincing "that's very cool". *sigh*

So, other than that, yesterday was my first day of class, and here's a review :

First up, anthropology. The class seems to be pretty much what I thought it was when I decided to take it : that is, lectures, studying from the book, and multiple choice exams to which we are allowed to take as many hand-written notes as we want. Nothing hugely exciting, but bearable.
Except that the teacher is this Chinese guy whose English just stings your ears. I mean it really hurts. Actually, his English is ok (although he did give us his "e-mail number"), but his accent just kills me. To be fair, he does seem to be a nice, helpful guy, so when I get used to his accent, things should work out.
And then the course pack we need for the class is 98$. Although he winded up telling us that he made a deal with the editors, so we get the mandatory 95-dollar book along with an un-mandatory book worth about 20 bucks for 98$ in that course pack. Interesting, but absolutely useless. I intend to try and find that mandatory book in a library or cheaper elsewhere.

Then, professional writing.
The teacher is a freak. Really. She really seems to think she's better than everybody else because she wrote books and articles, and she teaches her class sitting down for two hours. Plus we have no notes to take as everything is in our textbook (which she wrote and is personally selling to personally make all the money)so after a while, that class gets really boring. And since it is given from 8:30 to 10:30 at night, it is very easy to fall asleep.
Anyways, for this class, we need to team up and create a fictive corporation. Then we will write all the documents we may need for this corporation. The idea of creating it kind of knocked me out, but once this is done, the rest should go fine.

Other than that, I showed Tweety the board game I received for Christmas, which is called "Marry, date or dump?". The game comes with two packs of cards : blue cards and green cards. Tweety was taking a look at the pack of blue cards, when she suddenly noticed that there were green cards mixed in it. We separated them - only to see that the green cards clearly outnumbered the blue cards. We were puzzled at first, and then Tweety found two alike cards. That is when we realized that there were supposed to be green cards amongst the blue cards, and we had to separate the repeated cards... Took us about an hour. Yes, you get to university, you get to think you're smart, and then you do something stupid like that ! :)